abney park concert.

....starring.....the band abney park

and appearing as spectators:
dancien graves, rev eponym, and moi.

so my exhaustive study of steampunk fashion culminated in the abney park concert in dallas, at the venerable goth club, the church. seeing as i had never had the chance to study these creatures in situ, i was of course intensely interested. and the proceedings were even more enhanced because i had the pleasure to meet in real life, two very interesting people of my second life acquaintance.

dancien graves is a very well known and influential second life fashion blogger. he was in "steampunk jihad."

he wore a shemagh (i totally had no idea what that was till he posted it on plurk) with british aviator goggles. (this provoked probably the most hilarious comment i have ever seen in flickr, composed by grady echegaray: "Smiteth the anti-fashionista unbelievers and ye shall have 72 supermodels in paradise!") in the days leading up to the concert, dancien advised me to go to a military surplus store. pretty good advice. i think it gave us a very orientalist flavor, especially when we were holed up in the patio smoking my hookah.

i didn't ask but his shirt appeared to be handmade, or perhaps a poet shirt. (and what happens when my friend poet wears a poet shirt? but i digress) and his boots were very cool as well. i thought he looked very dancien of arabia, ready to lead some rebels. :) and i will say here that in person he is very charming, very considerate, and quite the gentleman, and i was very impressed by him.

rev eponym is a former member of the legendary second citizen forum, and also a builder/libertine/inventor/mad scientist/forumist.

Rev appears in the "Punchcard Networking Engineer"ensemble. the provenance of these things he is wearing is unknown, but he did tell me he was going to a second hand shop to look for something to wear a few days before the event.

i thought it very wonderful, and to me it gave him a very dashing dangerous sort of "strelnikov the revolutionary" kind of look. and of course that soul patch...what can i say....tremendo! in fact i think rev seems to have that whole bad boy cool thing down pat.

but, that is just my opinion, you know.

and then there was me, in the final version of the steampunk nilufer outfit.

although i had vowed not to wear a top hat, a calamitous attempt at a tarpush convinced me otherwise. luckily there were goggles at the bazaar and so i bought them and some seamed hose and fishnet gloves. i wore my spanish mantilla as a hat band, and wore laboriously braided false hair. interesting factoid but the hair added a little bit of bulk to my head and helped the hat stay on better, though rev did his part and assisted me in achieving a rakish angle that had previously eluded me.

as i dressed myself in the hotel room i wondered what people would say or do, as i was in the fairmount, a swanky hotel. but they didn't notice, or at least the bellboys did but they told me i looked "crazy" and "wild." upon further reflection i realize that i probably looked like a hideous mashup/collision of early madonna and generic romance novel cover vague victoriana. but vanity was satisfied because i was complimented a few times, and photographed too. the oddest comment was from a very drunk woman in the elevator as i was returning to my room. she told me i looked very unique.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

at times the profusion of creatively dressed people was staggering to me, a condition probably aggravated by my advanced state of inebriation. and where else do you get into a conversation with a girl about corsets, and end up feeling each other's corset bones????

one word. HOT.

interesting.

rev noted her different interpretation